So I have a d.

I also have a mess on my desk. I really need to do something about that.

So yeah, I have a d. And why do I have a d? Well, the short answer is that they're doing a big renovation -- a redesign, really -- of our permanent displays here at work. And that means destruction.

And that means, in the world of museums (of which we're sort of a part), that any of the old displays that aren't being incorporated into the new one are first offered to other area museums, then to the staff, and then... well, I imagine that you can guess.

When it came time for the staff to have their picks I decided that I didn't want anything. I have a small apartment, I'm already trying to get rid of clutter, and the plain fact is that display stuff is usually far bigger than you think it is. I might have wanted a small part of one of the displays that I helped work on if they weren't going to save it, but they're saving it so I'm ok with that.

I was away for a few days because I managed to pick up a bug that's been going around, and when I got in today there was a d on my desk. It's from the main title of the old display. I can't remember if I said anything about wanting it (I might have, jokingly), but somebody took pity on my lack of souvenirs and now I have a d.

And what will I do with my d? Hang it on the wall, of course. What else do you do with a d when you go by Dee most of the time? I'll hang it on the wall, and if people ask about it I'll say that it's to remind me of who I am.

Which it is in a way, I suppose. You can't work in the same job for so long and not have it affect who you are at least a little.



Besides, it's my d.

The problem with my week

The problem with spending the better part of a week sitting in a small room with three other people (and one other by WebEx) is that it doesn't really give you anything to blather about unless you feel the need to blather about software set-up.

I don't feel the need to blather about software set-up.

Besides, after a week in a small room I'd like to go outside for a bit and take some photos, or at least as many photos as today's winds will allow. So. Let's see, I guess, what photos I have on me (literally on me. I'm wearing my nerdstick on a lanyard at the moment) that I might be able to fake a blather with.

Ok, this'll do. It's weird, but it's talkable.

What you're seeing here is a photo I took from the bed of the underside of my Ikea chair. If the bed part sounds weird, just remember that I have a fold-out bed (one room apartment, if you'll recall) and when the bed's unfolded it comes nearly out to the chair.

If what's under the chair seems weird, just remember that when the bed's unfolded the stuff under the chair is an easy grab if I'm working on something. In other words, the underside of the chair tends to function like a desk drawer. That is, unless I'm having people over. Then the stuff under the chair gets shoved into the closet. I do have at least a little pride in appearance.

Anyway.

What you're seeing? Well, from bottom right, gesso, masking fluid, and glue. Exciting so far, I imagine. Behind? a bag containing assorted stuff that I use in my mixed media journal. The brown, gesso-edged paper sheets that you might be able to make out are actually the journal itself. It's a mess. It's a mess on purpose. I tend to get caught up in making things look "right", especially when I'm doing things for work, so when I find myself getting too much of a stick up my butt, artistically-speaking (artistic butt-sticks? That's a bit odd. And no doubt some performance artist somewhere has already done a version of it), I get out my journal and make a pointless mess.

I tell myself that I'm trying out techniques, and I suppose that sometimes I am. Really, though, it's more like my version of finger painting. Sometimes literally done with my fingers.

Top left? Um, Terra Stix. I'm a bit of a sucker for the taro, to be honest. Probably as much because of the little purple flecks as the taste. Behind the snack food is a Jenga Xtreme set. I suck at Jenga. That's why I only play myself.

Shall we mention the elephant in the room now? How many of you saw the Portable Atheist (which I'm rereading, by the way) and immediately formed a judgment? How many of you decided that I'm godless and will a) pray for me, or b) shun me? How many of you saw Atheist and have decided that I'm somehow a kindred spirit who's willing to rail against religion?

How many of you stopped having knee-jerk reactions long enough to realise that it's just a book?

I like books. I read lots of books. I need to be better at keeping the bookshelf you see on the sidebar up to date, because I've done a fair amount of reading these past few months that I haven't bothered to list here. I read a lot, and I read a lot of different viewpoints. Do the viewpoints in the above book agree with mine?

Sorry, not saying.

I have beliefs, obviously. Everybody does. But the moment I tell you my beliefs this blog has an agenda, whether I want it to or not. Everything I blathered would be coloured in a way that I wouldn't have meant it to be. That's so not what I want this place for.

The word pointless is in the title, after all. This blog is supposed to be light, pointless, and largely a waste of time.

Generally it succeeds in that, I think you'll agree.

So, for anyone looking for religion or politics, you've come to exactly the wrong place. For anyone looking for weird pictures, pseudophilosophy, pointless whinging, or occasional flights into the completely silly... well, here you are, aren't you?





Come over to my place. We'll sit on the bed, eat taro chips, suck at Jenga, and finger paint with gesso.

And not talk about atheists.

Chapter 1718: Wherein Dee has officially hit way too jaded

Photo? Has nothing to do with anything. As usual.

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I just watched a video. A video designed to elicit a very specific emotional response. It's here, if you're interested. A caveat, though: the cause is a good one, but the squeamish shouldn't watch the video while eating. Or maybe even while thinking about eating.

Anyway, if you watched that, how did you feel? Compassionate? Disgusted? Just plain ill?

I thought it was... interesting.

Yeah, I turned into Spock at some point during the proceedings. Is that normal? I mean, yeah I do have a zoology degree and I've seen some pretty gross things, but should I just have watched it and then read the write-up to learn more about the organisation? That's what I did. My mind basically went wow, people suffer from some pretty disgusting parasites. That was the extent of my emotional involvement.

Now, some may say that it's a pretty classic response to want to distance yourself from harsh realities and I suppose it is, but personally? I think I'll blame the internet, or at least modern communication. We see too much stuff. There's just too much of it out there. Is it so weird that eventually the brain just starts reacting without emotion?

Or is it just that this thing had too much of a build-up to the SHOCKING thing that we were about to be shown? Maybe I looked at it like a dare or something without realising it. Got my back up a bit. I dunno, and I need to get back to work so I don't have time to talk myself into some pseudophilosophy, although that might be fun.

It would all end with us deciding that yes, I am too jaded, though. I guess if you want to you can come up with your own middle to that conclusion. I need to go back to playing newsletter editor now.



Hmm. Maybe that's why I'm currently incapable of feeling...

Things lead to more things. Always.

That sounded really philosophical there for a minute, didn't it? Ah well, don't worry. I'm not intending to be all deep.

Rather the opposite, actually.

I spent a while yesterday browsing around the virtual shops for photography stuff. After all, a new camera may say that it's ready to go right out of the box, but that's just for the basics. I don't want to stay on the basics forever. You don't want me to, either. The faster we get away from frozen pumpkin pictures, the better.

So what else do I need for the camera? A few things, that thankfully can come in dribs and drabs. I've already bought a case (apparently carrying the thing around in a toque is fairly frowned upon. Or at least giggled at, as I quickly found out) and a card reader. I'm avoiding, for the moment at least, the expensive cable that I'm still more than po'd wasn't included with the camera. I mean, that's fine if the camera takes a standard cable that you can find anywhere, but that certainly doesn't seem to be the case here. HDMI cable? Well, that can wait, too. I haven't even really done anything about taking video yet.

Cleaning things I could mostly scam from the gadget bag that has my old Minolta film camera in it. I was out of lens paper, but Dad had some so I'm good there. I already have a full-sized tripod, and a fantastic tripod of Dad's that folds out to full size but folds up to a mini. I know you can still find stuff like that out there, but there's no way you'll find one as well built as this vintage tripod.

What does that leave, then?

Too much.

I need some filters, for one thing, and of course this camera's a 52 mm so my 48 mm (I think...) Minolta stuff is no-go. I could buy an adapter, I suppose, but a person may as well go for the ones that fit. It's not like my old filters were terribly expensive anyway, and why would I want to fit a smaller filter onto the lens in the first place? So what filters, then? I'd definitely like a polarizer, because I'd miss having one. I always used to keep a skylight on the Minolta for protection, but I see that there's two schools of thought as to whether they're necessary -- or even wanted -- these days, what with auto white-balance and all. Anything else? Maybe a fluorescent, since incandescent bulbs are disappearing rapidly. How about 4-point stars, or rainbows, or softeners? Not sure I want to go back to taking photos like a teenage girl, to be honest. It seems weird to finally have a proper SLR again and then consider using it for glorified instagram pictures.

That leads me to books. I've been looking at books. Cameras today have so many functions, it'd be a shame not to know how to use them. So, a book that specifically refers to my camera would be nice, and then an overall DSLR reference. Or references. I've found a few that look promising, but they can sit on my wish list for now.

That takes me to the toys, naturally. Flashes. Remote releases. That macro lens that I already have in mind but need to wait until after car insurance and income tax to pay for. Maybe a gadget bag specifically for this camera so that the Minolta doesn't have to find new digs...





Sigh. You get what I'm meaning now by things leading to other things. Do I need all of these things for my new camera thing? Of course not. Some of them, like the cleaning kit, are necessary. Most of them are just things that I'd like to have, and they can wait. It's still a dangerous thing to be looking at things, though.

Probably safer to be looking at lunch. Just a note on posting before I go, then. I have a pretty busy month coming up (read that as: you're going to be reading the word planetarium a bit), so don't be surprised if my blatherage becomes a little more irregular for a while. But then, most of my two fans are used to the ups and downs of this blog by now.

The others will just have to find something else to read.

Here I am...

And here's an apple.

Um, the end?

Ok, sorry for the unexpected disappearance. I'd tell you what happened, but you'd just start to wonder if I should be allowed to use things like chairs and scissors.

Scissors weren't involved, by the way. Chairs, on the other hand...

Oh, I'll leave it to your imagination. Suffice to say that I had a pretty strange last week, and I currently have an interesting limp.

And let's move on.

My sleep's been a little erratic the past few days (not unusual for me, I think my two fans will already know), and it's led to a couple of weird things. Like dreams, for instance. Now, of course I know that I dream anyway, but I very rarely remember my dreams. I've mentioned this before, but I think it's sort of a self-protection thing from back when I used to have freakishly scary dreams as a kid. The brain finally got to the point where it said fine. You're going to insist on doing that to yourself? Then I'll just turn off the memory function until you smarten up.

Or something like that, anyway. The point is that to this day I find it a bit odd when I wake up remembering a dream.

I did this morning, though. And it was a doozy.

You know those prescription "sleep aids" (as they euphemistically call them in the commercials) that occasionally have the side effect of sleep walking or even sleep driving? Well, I'm not on any of those, but last night I had such a vivid dream of sleep driving that I was almost certain that my car wouldn't be there this morning when I went down to the parking lot. It was only a dream, though. Either that or I'm an amazingly good sleep driver, even to the point of parking the exact same way that I did when I drove the car last.

Realistic dreams always kind of freak me out, though. Have you ever had the one where you dream that your alarm goes off (and that should really tip me off that it's a dream right there. Since my brain decided to be up at stupid o'clock I almost never need to use an alarm these days) and you go through a very mundane work day only to have your REAL alarm go off? And then you didn't even get to do anything fun in the dream like accidentally show up naked?

Erm... just me, then? Oh, all right.

Anyway, I should get back to actual, non-dream work. Or at least I'm assuming that it's not a dream. And since I really need to not be breaking into pseudophilosophy just at the moment, we're going to roll with the assumption, ok?

Ok.

One last and completely unrelated thing, though. This is kind of intriguing. What names would you decide on for those colours? I'm not sure I'm creative enough, really. Wouldn't they have got bored awfully quickly with answers like blue. Lighter blue. Darker blue. Even darker blue...

And I wouldn't even get to accidentally show up naked...

To boldly go

Ok, today's photo -- which accidentally ended up to be one of my most truly pointless creations ever -- is going to take some explaining. In honour of the Mars Curiosity Rover landing, I was going to take a picture of the Apollo mission models that I played with when I was very little. I thought I knew where they were in my closet here at Dad's, but that box turned out instead to have plastic Inuit models in it. An igloo, a man in a kayak, a polar bear... I have no idea why I have them.

Then I thought I might know where the Apollo stuff could be downstairs. No luck, but I did find my collection of patience cards (you know, those mini cards you use for playing solitaire. I like solitaire. I liked it even as a kid. That's probably sad, isn't it). I wasn't in the mood to delve into searching the store room just for some plastic models, so in the spirit of something spacey I decided to pose C-3PO on the shuffle board (I didn't pose the shuffleboard rocks. They were already there). Then I added Jasper the Bear (whose faded sign says CANADA. Well, where else would you find Jasper the Bear?) and an assortment of small boats because my family keeps weird stuff.

It, erm, made sense at the time.

Also, I need to clean the cat hair off of the shuffleboard. I notice that you can see Max's launch pad to the basement window ledge in the background...

Anyway.

I didn't stay up for the Mars landing, and to be honest I was astonished that it went off successfully. When I saw the descriptions of what was supposed to happen I could understand what the JPL was calling "seven minutes of terror" or however they put it. It just sounded so unbelievable that something so complicated could work. But it did, and I imagine that it wouldn't be hard to find a few happily hung over rocket scientists in California today.

I bet my two fans are waiting now for me to tell them that I've always been a huge fan of the space program and... no. I'm not going to be saying that, actually. I'm interested in the space program and I'm not against it by any means, but I'm not one of those who follows each mission with fish breath (you know, baited). I was a little too young to understand the Apollo missions (although I'll admit to being alive during all but the first moon landing. Well, I was alive even then, I suppose. Just hadn't made my entrance), I don't remember Skylab. I was aware of the Shuttle program and, as a reformed Trekkie, was sort of nerdily thrilled that they named the first one Enterprise, but that's about it. Yes, I remember where I was when the Challenger blew up (I had a spare first period that day and was watching the whole thing on live television as I got ready for school, in case you wondered), but then that's not the kind of thing you forget even if you don't really care about space exploration.

So why am I even bringing the Mars Rover up if I'm not a space junkie? A few reasons, I guess. First... IT'S ANOTHER PLANET. We've landed something on another planet. And we've done it more than once. A small step in the grand scheme of the universe, yes, but it's a pretty big thing for our species. We have the opportunity to study a whole different planet, and I think some of us forget just how science-fictiony that really is.

For those who deplore the waste of money, well, I see your point. Really, I do. If a person has to look at things from a purely economic standpoint I suppose I could bring up the old saw of the potential spinoffs (think of Teflon and Tang. No, wait. Not Tang. That's a myth. Tang wasn't developed for the space program), but you've already heard that from other people so I'm not going to bother with it. I guess I fall more on the side of those who say it's important for humankind to keep exploring, although I don't do it with nearly as much enthusiasm as the space evangelists out there.We are more or less programmed to explore, though, and have been since our ancestors left Africa.

Oh, I just outed myself as an evil evolutionist there, didn't I? Well, I'm sorry, but despite what my beliefs about how life did or didn't start on earth are (and, frankly, you can't claim to know what they are even if you think you do), I can't ignore the masses of evidence that show that I wasn't created from Adam's rib.

We need to keep learning. We need to discover. The worst thing we can do is stagnate. We need to learn, and we never really know what benefits that learning is going to give us. That's my true interest in things like this. The science is pretty cool on its own, but the fact that we'll be able to look back at things like this fifty years (or less) down the road and see that this led to that which led to that which led to that is even better.

And I'm going to stop going down that particular blather avenue now before things start to sound preachy.

For any of my two fans who are now wondering if I'm excited about the prospect of people on Mars, I might surprise you a bit again by saying no. I'm not. We're not there yet, in terms of our capabilities. We likely will be someday, and maybe even in my lifetime, but not now. I'm all for working on figuring it out, but at the moment I'm far more excited about these rovers and the things that they might teach us. Let's learn a bit more before we take the next step, I think.

And in the meantime, I'll be following Mars Curiosity here.

What's on your hand today, Dee?

Great shot, that. A truly pointless photo. Taken with the 3DS, since my two fans will remember that I feel a little weird about using the work camera to take pointless personal photos. And gotta love the angle -- I wasn't sure how to... um... "pose" to give you an idea of the wonder that is today's ring, so you ended up with an inadvertently strained pseudo-thumb's-up.

Ah well. The place is called pointless for a reason, after all.

What you're semi-seeing in the photo is a wonder of the early nineties, boys and girls. If you think you're seeing a silver cat-faced ring, then you have a pretty good imagination. It is, in fact, a silver cat-faced ring, but how you could tell that from a 3DS photo is beyond me. What you can't really see in the photo is that it's one of those rings that's adjustable and not joined up. It's kind of winding its way around my finger in a vaguely catish/snakish fashion. It has two sort-of limbs that make it look like it has its hands tucked in its pockets, and it's pretty much incredibly tacky. Real silver, though. Marked and everything.

I used to wear it a lot in university, which in itself is kind of odd when you consider that I was a zoology student and that my days were spent in dissection labs. Funny that it didn't poke through the gloves. Anyway, I haven't worn it for years, but on a whim this morning I polished it up and figured I'd see what it felt like.

Not too bad, all things considered, but I certainly wouldn't wear it for a pond study.

I'd mentioned a while ago a little bit of a resolution to try to vary what jewellery I wear, and it's been interesting. Oh, there's plenty of days when it'll still be the regular gold earrings and the silver pinkie ring you see in the picture, but I generally try to wear a chain or pendant instead of my flash drive around my neck, and I'll have at least a couple of days a week where I'll go fishing through the earring drawers to change things up a bit. Has anyone noticed? To be honest, I haven't asked and I don't really care. This is for me.

You see, I'm remembering now how I used to express myself through junky earrings and things like that. When I was (an awful lot) younger I used to match my earring themes to my programs. My family would give me interesting-looking earrings because they knew I'd always find a use for them, and I know one relative in particular who took a weird sort of delight in bringing back earrings from holidays that she knew I'd never find anything like around here.

Somewhere along the line I lost that.

I suppose it's a pretty simple combination of getting older and getting lazier, but I just stopped caring about adornment at some point. I still don't think it's especially important -- if I go out without a piece of jewellery on I definitely won't have a panic attack -- but I'd forgotten that it can be fun.

The last few months I've been having a little more fun again.

That's cool.

Anyway, back to work for me. And if anyone's wondering if the cat ring meant the sacrifice of other personal decoration (after all, I did have to take an extra thirty seconds this morning to polish it), the answer is nope. Rose quartz danglers, amethyst studs, silver ear cuff (I've been wearing that pretty regularly, actually), and a labradorite pendant. I'm the silver and stone queen today, boys and girls.

And it's sort of a nice change.

Maybe I'm doing this wrong

But first, a couple of hints from the fifteen-year-old cat (who's perhaps not as heat tolerant anymore as he would have been as a younger Max) on how to deal with a heat wave:

On the left, we see use your favourite brass music stand as a pillow. On the right, sleep under the damp clothing. I'm not sure if either of these really work, but he seemed happy enough. And if anyone's wondering why my clothes were hanging inside on a day when they probably would have been dry in approximately fifteen minutes outside, I'll just say that my work uniforms are variations on brown cotton t-shirts. Drying them in the sun is pretty much akin to pouring bleach on them.

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I'm having a bit of a weepy day. No worries there; I'm a crier at the best of times, and some days it just seems like anything will set me off for no reason. Well, I suppose there might be a reason in the background at the moment, but let me just say there that it sucks knowing someone you like is hurting and leave it at that. Maybe we'll (me 'n alllll the voices) discuss it more fully at another time. It's not the main reason for the tears anyway. Mostly it's just one of those days, compounded by heat-caused tiredness. I did, however, sleep in the basement again last night, so maybe I've banked a little for the sleep I won't be getting when I'm back in my own apartment. And anyway, like I said I've always been a crier. No need to tell me that it's hormonal, because if that's the case I was born that way (well... technically I was, being a mammal and all. Or, really, I could have said being an organism and all).

Anyway, the current maudlin mood has probably made some of my usual morning internet reading hit me a little harder than it might otherwise. When I have the time -- if I'm here at my dad's or if I come in early enough to work to have time for personal internet business -- I have my daily places that I go, as everyone does. You can get an idea of some of the blogs I visit from the list on my profile (although some of those aren't very active), but there are other sites as well that I'll just keep to myself for now.

For whatever reason, the morning reading has combined into a general feeling that I'm doing this wrong.

Blogging, I mean.

I could be doing something with this blog, really. I could, I suppose, be trying to change peoples' minds, for one thing. I have beliefs and I have opinions, and for the most part they're kept very carefully from the blather. Of course some things get through because they're a part of who I am, and if I didn't have me on the blog it'd read like build-it-yourself furniture instructions. Still, I defy anyone to be able to tell where I stand on... well, just about anything from what's written here.

Is that the way it should be? Shouldn't I be trying to convince you why you should believe what I believe?

Or if I didn't want to go the full philosophical route (whether philosophy of religion, or politics, or life, or whatever else), shouldn't I pick a cause? I work at a nature centre -- shouldn't this blog be a voice for what's wrong on the planet (or, more accurately, what's wrong with the way we're treating it)? Despite what you see here, I'm capable of writing well, and writing persuasively. Shouldn't I be using that for something?

It seems a waste, really.

But.

But but but but...

That's not me, I don't think.

I'm not The Voice. Of anything. I don't want to be Jeanne d'Arc or Cassandra (and they each came to such good ends anyway, didn't they?). I made a comment on Linda Hensley's blog recently about being scattered rather than passionate, and that's a problem if you're wanting to focus your blogging on some cause or other. I don't want to be heard, or at least not in that way. In my job, I teach. I give information to help make choices; I don't tell you what choice to make. I guess that's a reflection of how I live my life as well. And how I blog.

Having said that, does anyone besides me find it odd that I do far more teaching on my so-called arts blog than I do on this one?

As to my beliefs, it's hard for me to get past the feeling that they're none of your business in the end. I use Whomever (somewhat facetiously, admittedly) here rather than Allah or Jesus or Krishna or, well, Whomever, for a reason. I have no need or desire for you to pigeonhole me. Yes, my thoughts are clouded by my beliefs. That's unavoidable. But by not sharing those beliefs with you, I'm preventing what I post here from being further clouded by your prejudices.

I think, anyway.

As far as politics go, at least that's an area where there's nothing to think about (as far as blogging goes). I'm one of the most apolitical people you'll find in the world when it comes to party politics. Yes, I have ideas as to policy, because I believe (ah, belief. Back to that then, eh) that I have a responsibility to be informed as a citizen. When it comes to the whole your party is evil just because it's not my party thing, though, you've completely lost my interest.

And incidentally, and certainly no offense meant to those of my two fans who are Americans, to a non-partisan Canadian the current American situation seems pretty much nuts.





Hmm. Reading back what I've just typed (and believe me, I've been typing off the top of my head) it looks like I've completely talked myself out of any semblance of relevance.

Well, that's convenient. Forget about stream of consciousness helping you to know your own mind. Apparently all it takes is stream of blather. I guess that, in the end, this place is what it is because that's what I apparently want it to be. Besides, if I was trying to make this place mean something I'd have to start making sense allllllllllllllllllllll the time.

That doesn't sound like any fun at all.





Ok then. Glad I got that settled. And without any more tears, even. Bonus.

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One last thing: a quick car pet update. On the left, the car pet of the last week or so, which since the photo seems to have disappeared. I hope for its sake it disappeared right off the car, since I would have felt a little sad for it having to make a second trip down the highway. On the right, though, is proof that my car doesn't like to be petless for terribly long. Not the greatest picture of the actual spider, but get a load of the reflection in the mirror. When I checked it last night it was in the process of making a (very futile) web whose scaffolding stretched from the top of the door frame all the way to the ground. Not very car friendly, but it'll find that out soon enough...

Silly things I do sometimes

I'll be honest -- I don't really have a post in mind again today. It's a shame, because it's shaping up to be another blog-neglect week since work will be busy (yeah, there's yer warning). So... I guess we're going to talk photography. Somewhat.

I like taking pictures, but I don't really care if they're award-winning. Which is a good thing, because I know that about 95% of what I take (ok, more like 99%) is immensely forgettable. That's fine with me. Most of the photos I take are pointless, which is why they get used on the blog. By the way, if you've ever wondered whether I carefully save all of the shots that have been posted here over the years, the answer is a big fat undeniable NO. They're disposable. They get deleted from my nerdstick almost as soon as they're posted, for the most part. I rarely regret that, because one of the beauties of digital photography (especially when you're posting it on the web) is that it's pretty darned easy to recover something if you suddenly decide that the artful shot of the downspout covered in ice just has to be sent into some completely useless photography competition that you're not going to win anyway.

Um, not that I do that sort of thing.

Ok, once. But it wasn't a downspout, and I'm not going to tell you which one it was because, as predicted, I wasn't going to win anyway.

And I'm not bitter.

Actually, I'm really not. I probably would have dropped down dead if I had won.

Anyway.

Like anyone who takes a lot of photos I occasionally get lucky, even with a point-and-shoot camera. Those ones I'll hold on to. Sometimes they become resource photos when I'm doodling, sometimes they get posted here... sometimes I think a bit about getting one or two of them printed and mounted, but it doesn't happen. I hold onto them just in case, though.

As for the rest, the decent ones show up on the blog, the bad disappear completely, and the mediocre? Well, sometimes I play. Like the version you see above of the photo to the left. Not a bad composition, I suppose, but in the original you can't even tell that they're apple blossoms. The angle was a nice try, but you didn't get it. Usually those ones just hit the bin, but sometimes I'll run them through the various silly filters in the photoeditor to see if anything comes out of it.

Like an inverted-colour purple portrait, I suppose. Or at least in this case.

If you went waaay back in the archive you'll find that I used to do this sort of thing a lot more often. I was using a different photoeditor back then, and it had a lot of useless toys. Useless because I could never figure out when you'd actually, seriously use them, but they were kind of fun to tinker around with when I had an iffy picture on hand. Then that software got pretty outdated, and I switched to using one of the free editors you can download from the internet. It did the trick for basics, but no toys.

Oddly enough, I didn't really miss the toys. I guess all toys get old after a while.

Anyway, a while back I updated the software.

And gained some toys.

Apparently, there are people out there who really use the toys, and not just for silly things.

Who knew?

So what does this mean for the blog? Well, probably not much in the end. I've probably grown out of (or maybe got bored with is more accurate) spending way too long fooling around with bad pictures to make them look... I dunno, arty? You might find one now and then if I haven't got anything better to do with my time, I suppose, but I wouldn't expect much more.

Or who knows? Maybe I'll just surprise everyone and turn this into the Pointless Assaults With A Photoeditor blog. Whomever knows that the blather part hasn't been going all that well lately.





That's it for now, then; see you at some point. This week might be interesting. Or at least blog-deficient.

50 Things: Aesthetics Edition

For those new to the program, every once in a (great) while when I feel like things have been getting a little too negative on the blog I'll do a 50 Things list. Fifty things that I like, that is. Or that make me happy. Or whatever, so long as it's on the positive side. This time around I thought I'd give myself a challenge and see if I could come up with a list focussed on the artistic side of life. I'm giving myself a little leeway here by calling it aesthetics, but that's mostly just so that this doesn't become a list of only painters or only colours or only carbon pencils. That'd be tricky. Erm, all of the above are allowed to appear on the list, by the way, and probably will.

Are you ready? Keep in  mind that I'm doing this entirely on the fly, so I have no real idea of what's going to come out:

1. Spiders. Yes, spiders. I find them aesthetically pleasing, in case you hadn't noticed. They're built very well for what they do, and there's a beauty to that. Just check out the Thin-legged Wolf Spider on the typing stand above. Kind of pretty, right? She's been my morning companion, you know. Doesn't talk much, but keeps the place bug-free.
2. Carbon pencils. I'm in love with carbon pencils. Absolutely sensuous to work with.
3. Lilies. Fantastic bold lines.
4. Interesting paper. And note that interesting doesn't necessarily mean expensive.
5. Renoir. A bit cliché, I know, but really my first introduction to impressionism so I'll always have a soft spot there.
6. Black paper. I like the occasional challenge of not being able to erase my mistakes. Only occasionally, though.
7. Branching patterns.
8. Patterns in general.
9. Diagonals.
10. Leaves. Leaves are a great way to practice drawing what's really there as opposed to what you think a leaf's supposed to look like.
11. Purple. Like the Early Blue Violets below (which are purple, despite the common name). They're all over Dad's yard right now.
12. Ok, violets of any colour.
13. Smudging. When it's on purpose, that is.
14. Moleskines. And I hate that I do, because it feels like I got sucked in by the advertising.
15. Watching people create almost anything. Even industrially. Remember the motorcycle-building shows that were all the rage a few years ago? I was heavily into them. And I haven't been on a motorcycle since I was a kid. Um... it was with my uncle, I should say.
16. Tulips.
17. Learning the thinking behind artistic choices.
18. Dale Chihuly. Well, his work. I honestly don't have an opinion one way or another about the man himself. But if you ever get the chance to see Chihuly in the Hotshop when PBS reruns it, watch. You'll be amazed.
19. Rich wood grain. You know, like an old library. I don't understand how people can paint over that sort of warmth and comfort.
20. Watching work progress. Someone I follow on twitter is currently tweeting photos of a mural that he's working on and it keeps interrupting my thought process here, to be honest. Not that there was much thought process to begin with, but...
21. Making myself get messy. It's completely against the grain for me, but every once in a while I just really need to open up my mess of a mixed media journal and make it even more of a mess.
22. Texture. It's one of the reasons that I've not had much urge to learn to paint. The brush is too much of a barrier to the media for me. Maybe I should take up fingerpainting?
23. Monet. Again with the impressionists, yes. I like impressionism, I guess.
24. Greens. Plural.
25. Actually getting something right. I spend too much time not liking my doodles, I'll admit.
26. Water drops. Take a closer look at water droplets on leaves or flowers after the next rain. Thousands of tiny magnifiers, really. Which leads me to...
27. Seeing things in a different way. Magnified, stripped down, opened up... whatever. I like seeing different facets of familiar things.
28. Daffodils. Geez, lots of members of the Liliaceae today. Not too surprising, though. I really do like the lines.
29. Am I allowed at this point to say flowers, period? I'm going to anyway.
30. Being surprised by a style or genre that I didn't think that I liked. Has anyone out there seen one of the seasons of Work of Art: The Next Great Artist? I'm not going to debate the merits of the works as actual art (and the whole idea of artists even competing like that) because I'm up in the air about it myself, but the show does have the advantage of introducing a person to methods of working and end results that you might not have even remotely considered in the first place. Stretching your boundaries is always a good thing.
31. Just plain doodling without an aim. I don't do enough of it at the moment (well, I don't do any of it until my wrist heals a bit more), and I need to make an effort to start again.
32. Hidden detail. Things you won't notice the first time around but surprise you the second or third.
33. Crud, am I only on 33? Ok, unexpected results, as long as it's not in something I'm doing for work. Work stuff needs to turned out as planned. Nature of the beast.
34. Inktense pencils. I kind of suck at using them still, but I'm having fun with the mistakes at least.
35. Trying out new media on someone else's dime. In other words, thank you to my enablers who keep giving me gift cards for things that I'm far too cheap to ever think about buying with my own money (yeah, I'm laughing at myself here, but it's true).
36. Masking fluid. It's still sort of a new toy for me, but other than the smell it's kind of fun.
37. Really good soft graphite pencils.
38. The Group of Seven. Being Canadian I grew up seeing their stuff on calendars and things like that to the point where it was boring and routine. A number of years ago, though, I was lucky enough to see many of the actual works on display in Ottawa and... wow. In person you really get what all the fuss is about.
39. The way things are put together in nature. Growth patterns, things like that.
40. Being nearsighted. And this is the only place you'll see my myopia on a "like" list. Overall I'd rather not be nearsighted, but I think it's given me more of an appreciation for detail.
41. Digital cameras. I said before that I like seeing things in different ways, and digital cameras allow me to do that without the worry of the cost of developing a bunch of wasted film. Sure, film photography has more craft to it, but digital has the freedom. I mean, just try googling camera tossing. Would that have ever happened without digital?
42. Lichtenberg figures. Look it up. They're amazing. Frozen lightning.
43. The internet, for making it so easy to find art.
44. Shells. Again with the strong lines. I suppose I'm not really into fussy.
45. Art stix. Another thing that I'm still figuring out how to use. Maybe I like things that I'm incompetent with, I don't know.
46. Pewter. Or, rather, neat things made from pewter.
47. Coloured gemstones. Diamonds may be a girl's best friend, but aesthetically I find them fairly boring.
48. Butterflies. And moths, actually. And ladybird beetles. Insects add interest to flowers for me. Like a brooch on a nice jacket. Shut up. That's not weird.
49. Having an art gallery at work. It'll probably be gone with the upcoming renovations, but I'll certainly miss the opportunities it's brought along with it. Opportunities of all sorts, including having some of my own stuff exhibited (which I never would have imagined happening in... ever).
50. Soluble graphite. Ink wash without the ink, and at least partially erasable (thank goodness).

There. That's fifty. I'm not going to read them back just now since I've been called for lunch, but when I do I'll no doubt cringe. Ah well. The cringing is all part of the... fun?

Or whatever this was.

Type at you later.

Losing my Latin

Forgive today's pointless doodle. I know the arty things usually go to the other blog, but in this case I'm having a bit of a laugh with myself. You see, this is one of the exercises from an art program for the DS that I got on a whim with my points. It just seems funny to me that I'm making "art" on a what? 2 x 2 1/2" screen on a video game console?

Ah well. Maybe it'll be able to teach me how to paint. I've certainly not had much luck trying to teach myself.

----------

Now, to today's title. Further to my botanical thoughts from yesterday (oh! Should I throw out a few pointless botany terms before I go on? Ok, let me see... how about diadelphous? Glabrous? Acuminate? All perfectly good words in the world of plants), I ended up back in the more comfortable world of zoology last night when I was trying to come up with something for this week's Illustration Friday prompt.

The word was fluid. So what would you expect to do from that? Raindrops, maybe? Cocktails would have been all right. A lake would've done. Me? I drew blood vessels.

Yeah, yeah, I know. Look up the reason here if you're desperate to. I'm not going to type it twice.

Once I got on the track of arteries, I needed some reference material. Oddly enough, I don't carry around the structures of the body in my head anymore. There was a time when I could have made at least a rough sketch of the major vessels from memory, but that was a lot of years ago and (again, oddly enough) I don't do much dissection these days. Or any at all, really. That is, unless you count taking apart a pork roast to fit it into the slow cooker.

I make pretty decent pulled pork, you know.

Where was I? Oh yeah, reference material. And after the pulled pork thing, my crab salad sandwich really isn't going to cut it for lunch.

Anyway, I started flipping through my old dissection manuals looking for a likely subject. And yes, I do realise that some of you are officially grossed out by the fact that I kept my old dissection manuals, but hey. I'm in the nature business, remember? Occasionally they come in handy if someone's brought in a random bone or something for identification. And they don't stink of formalin anymore. Well, not much, anyway. The random staining would probably be disturbing to a lot of people, but...

Sorry. I'm distracting myself. My head's still not working quite right, which is part of the reason for last night's arterial extravaganza. I had a couple of other ideas, but I didn't think I'd be able to get my brain around them.

Back to topic. Obviously there's going to be a lot of terminology in an anatomy book. It's more comfortable terminology to me than the botany stuff, but these days I have to pause and think about some of those words to get the hamster wheel going, if you know what I mean. I can't exactly rattle them off like I used to be able to.

Which makes the notes kind of fascinating, in a weird way.

I took notes in my lab manuals, you see. It was easier to scribble in the margins (and all over the covers for the longer stuff) than to take out another notebook. Which, to be honest, probably would have just gained a bunch of all-too-identifiable stains. Better to keep that to the one book, right?

The notes and drawings are in my handwriting, of course. Reading them now, though, makes me feel a little like I have a split personality. Somebody was able to spell those twenty-letter words (only slightly exaggerating there). Somebody had all the muscles in a cat's neck and shoulder memorised. It sure the heck wasn't me.

Not anymore, at any rate. And incidentally, flipping through that cat book reminded me just how oddly braided a cat's shoulder muscles look. It's amazing. You should look it up. Or I will, if you like. That'll save you all the pictures of actual dead cats stretched out on dissection trays.

You're welcome.

Anyway, I know that I'm not the only one who could look back at old university notes -- I don't care what subject -- and be slightly astonished at how much I knew when I was intensively having to know. Do I know less now? No, I don't think so. I know different. I'm not in a lab every day, so I don't use the lab stuff much. Ask me how much I would have known about the wildlife in an aspen forest back in university, though. Not nearly as much as I know now. Back then I was learning how to be a specialist; today I have to know how to be a generalist.

I'm good with how things turned out. Still sometimes miss the labs, though. Even the formalin. And I never thought I'd say that.

----------

Just a note for anyone who's disgusted by the talk of dissection in both of today's blog posts: I studied zoology. Dissection was a vital part of learning anatomy. It always will be, no matter how good computer simulation gets. To really understand how a body works you have to do more than just stare at a screen. You have to be able to touch, feel, see how things move... and compare them with other things. You really do, and I wouldn't trade my anatomical training for anything.

Having said that, though, I'm going to say something that might surprise you: I'd like to see dissection taken out of high school biology courses. Seriously. On a practical note, the bulk specimens they buy are usually crap and you can't see anything anyway. On a moral (if you will) note, it's pointless to kill a bunch of animals when the vast majority of kids who take biology will never do a thing with it once they're out of school. So how do you teach the few who will use it about anatomy? That's the place for computer and plastic models. I don't deny at all that they're a great place to start, and that's how it should be done for beginners. Anything else is just the gross-out factor of having a group of kids cut open a dead thing, and that's a stupid and pointless waste.

Um.

Thus endeth the lecture?

I have to get back to work now.

New photo!

Yes, as the fake excitement above indicates, I actually got around to taking a few new shots yesterday. Don't get too excited yourselves, though; the fact that most of them have the word dead somewhere in their file name should tell you that there's not a whole lot of excitement to be found in the yard at this time of year.

The cat's not dead, though.

And incidentally, was I the only one who didn't know that Black & Decker made cats?

----------

I don't have a whole lot today because I got yet another late start (must be something about this particular weekend) and have been spending my time with other things rather than thinking about blog posts. I'd never be able to do this for a living, thank goodness.

Why thank goodness?

Well, just imagine the pressure of having to think of things on a regular basis. Having to. It'd take any sort of fun out of it pretty darned quickly for me. I don't do well when my hobbies become necessities. I know I've said that before, but for those new to the program (and yes, I know that I've said that before, too. Many, many times. In case you haven't noticed, repeating stupid phrases tends to be my lazy attempt at having any kind of style here. Again, good thing I don't do this for a living), I work very hard to keep my hobbies as hobbies, because they seem to stop being fun as soon as they show any sign of being taken seriously. My piano hardly gets touched now because of too many years of teaching singing (that needs to change, though. I'm kind of missing playing piano now. I need to get back in the habit), my doodles will always stay doodles even if some people get sniffy at the term because I never want to take the chance of thinking about them as art, and my writing?

Is silly.

I can write better than this. I do write better than this. Heck, if you want to get all technical about it, I can say that I've written professionally. I've redesigned poorly-written text for a permanent exhibit at work because the "professional" they'd engaged buggered off and refused to do anything more about it when his work was deemed unsatisfactory. I edit our newsletter. I've won poetry competitions, believe it or not. I'm more than capable of stringing words together in ways that are readable, and can make people want to read them.

I'd sooner stay silly, I guess. I'd sooner put words that don't really matter on a blog that doesn't really matter in combination with pictures that don't really matter (and rarely have anything to do with the text). It's disposable. It's absurd, and I like absurd.

It's a hobby, and I want it to stay fun. I want it not to matter.

I suppose you would say that I lack passion, and you'd be right. I don't think I could ever claim to be truly passionate about anything. I like a lot of things, and there are a lot of things that have been able to keep me interested for a long time, but I've never discovered the one thing that made me say THAT'S what I want to do with my life.

Just as an aside, I accidentally ended up in the perfect career for someone like me. It's one of the few areas left where you have to be a jack-of-all-trades. Oh sure, there are naturalists out there who are absolute expert birders or trackers or survivalists or whatever, but for those of us in the day-to-day business of dealing with people in a more urban setting it's more important to have a little knowledge about a whole lot of things, and a lot of knowledge about where to find the information on what you don't know. That's me, right there.

Anyway. For not having anything to say I've managed to type out quite the diatribe here. I could tell you what's been going on in the back of my brain that brought this on, but at this point I think I'll save it for another time and then reexamine whether I even really want to talk about it.

And then I'll probably talk about play-doh or something instead.





Must keep the blog pointless, after all. Other wise it turns into a pumpkin. That's the rules.

Things

 But first...

I have a ratty pink blanket that I put over the sofa bed in my old room here at my father's place when it's folded up but not actually being used as a sofa. It looks like heck, yes, but it does have the advantage of keeping the cat hair off of the sofa if the cats decide to use it.

The pink blanket works.

Or, you know...



Not.

Way to go, Max.

----------

And now, things.

Material things, I mean.

No doubt it's a sign of getting older, but I'm starting to find that I don't really care about most things. I don't have to have many things. My cell phone's pretty much five years old now because I don't care if I have the latest one. My wardrobe? Well, my wardrobe probably suffers from the fact that I wear a uniform shirt at work. If I didn't I might have to have more wardrobe-y things, true, but I still probably wouldn't have the absolute latest wardrobe things. My television isn't HD, but it works well. My apartment is a one-room with a horrid 70s carpet, but it fits my books and my art stuff and my instruments and has a balcony for my planters, so it'll do. I could go on, but it would be in much the same vein. My life definitely isn't about the latest and greatest things.

Anyone with thing ambition is probably cringing right now, or at least wondering how a person can live that way. Don't I want things? Well, sure. There's lots of things that I see on television that I know would be nice to have, but I don't need them. I don't intend to go into debt for them. I can do without them. I'm not amaterialistic by any means; I just have my own priorities. As my boss said once when we were laughing about the fact that the person who does much of the looking-after of the work blog and twitter account and maintains two blogs of her own doesn't even have a computer at home, " you just haven't bought into it, have you?"

I guess. Either that, or I like the way my life is without adding more things.

When I first moved away from home I used to make mental lists of the things I would save in case of a fire. The list used to be pretty darned long, I'll admit, and probably would have resulted in multiple trips and my eventual death from smoke inhalation. Now? My personal ID, I suppose. Enough clothes to make sure I wasn't freezing to death as I stood outside watching my things going up in flames. Maybe, just maybe, and only if I had time to think about it, a small stuffed bunny...

Ah, there we go. Here's where we hit what things matter. The aforementioned bunny? Just a silly Easter gift my mother gave me just before she died. It was an impulse buy at the grocery store and there's nothing special about it. I wouldn't mourn it if it did disappear, but if I thought about it I might save it. And maybe my grandmother's topaz rings... but again, it honestly wouldn't kill me if I couldn't manage it.

The things that matter to me are the things that have associations, but if the things go away it doesn't mean that the memories do, right?

The other day I was drawing an old conch shell that came down through my other grandmother's family... oh, here. Rather than my typing the whole thing out again, let me just link to the post on the other blog and you can see for yourself if you're so inclined. Anyway, I've told my father that I specifically want the conch shells (juuust in case he ever planned to get rid of them for some reason). They're in my room at the moment, actually, since I'm considering taking them home to do a few more drawings of them. The old conch is a piece of family history. Continuity. A reminder of my childhood. Would I be upset if it disappeared? For a little while, yes.

And then I'd move on.

It's a thing.

Now, admittedly, there have been happenings in my life that have given me the current thingless attitude, most of which I don't want to mention because they're personal (and in one case fairly painful). I'll also concede that it's easier for a single person who plans on remaining single to not care whether she has anything to pass on to her nonexistent children. I just wish, though, that a few more people could find a way to be less thing-y (ok, that sounded funny even to me). Too many people argue over things. Too many relationships have been wrecked by things. Too many of us are in financial hell because of things. And you know what? In the end, they're just things.

And if things are all you have? Well, I guess you learn to be happy in your things.

I'd rather be happy in me.




Kind of a personal thing.

Niche

Today's pointless photo isn't exactly pointless (oh no... pumpkin time...) and it isn't exactly new. I took this one a few years ago, and it's one of the coolest spider pictures I've ever been lucky enough to take. It's also the one I'm currently using as my Blogger profile photo, if it looks familiar.

What we've got here is a Goldenrod Spider defending her egg sac. She laid her eggs on that chokecherry leaf and then wrapped it up protectively with silk, giving it that triangular shape. She would have guarded the sac until she died, giving the spiderlings as good a chance as possible to survive early predation.

Lots of them would have been eaten anyway, but that's the way nature works.

Spiders have been on my mind a bit (well, a bit more than usual. My two fans already know that I have a thing for spiders) because of my doodle for this week's Illustration Friday word. The word was scary, and if you're so inclined you can find my take on the other blog. You'll probably notice, though, that spider = scary wasn't something that I really had my heart in.

Listen, I know that spiders are scary for a lot of people. I get that. I find them beautiful, but if you've already made up your mind that they're scary then my finding beauty in them isn't going to do a thing for you except convince you even further that I'm weird. Whatever. It doesn't matter.

What does matter, though, is the people who seem to equate scary with needing to be destroyed.  There are plenty of them out there, sadly. Spiders and bugs scare me -- squish them! Snakes scare me -- call the exterminator! That's the kind of thinking that makes me more than a little depressed, to be honest.

You see, all of those scary things have their niches. Their usefulnesses. Their places where they belong in the system. Without them we run into a whole boatload of trouble.

Example? Well, imagine a world without spiders. You'd better start liking insects a whole bunch, because there's going to be a massive amount more of them. So let's just get rid of the insects? Ok, then. Do you like bluebirds? Or chickadees? Or woodpeckers? All insect-eaters, and you've in effect got rid of them too.

It sounds trite to say, I know, but everything's connected. Everything has a job, as I sometimes put it to my students at the nature centre. If one thing doesn't do its job, it makes it hard for the next thing to do its job, and so on and so on and so on. The tricky part for us is that even though we're also part of the system we like to believe that we're not. That wouldn't matter so much, except that we've given ourselves an awful lot of power over systems that maybe we'd be better off leaving to themselves. We decide that one job -- say, eating bugs -- isn't really all that important, so we remove (either inadvertently or on purpose. Both happen) the "pest" that's eating bugs. Then, when we're overrun with bugs, we bring in a new predator to try to create a new balance. And when that new balance turns out to mean that the new predator doesn't have any predators of its own and happily creates its own overrun?

Incidentally, I'm not really of the school that thinks that Seven-spot Ladybirds are evil. It's just that we don't know the full extent of what their introduction has done to the North American ladybird population.

For something much more sinister that was caused by human intervention, however, may I present the Cane Toad?

I don't want to go on a full-scale interpreter rant here, so I'm going to cut this short. Or, erm, at least a lot shorter than it could easily have been. Let me just end by saying that if you're scared of something, fine. Be scared of it. Whomever knows that there are plenty of things out there that I'm scared of. Just don't assume that scary means lacking value or importance, and that scary things should all go away. Sometimes it's even scarier to find out what we're left with after the scary things are gone...

Ok, so I forgot to blog

Seriously, I did. I got involved in some work stuff, and my head is full of snot (yep, tiredness and feeling blah have resolved themselves into my yearly fall cold... just in time for school programming to start in earnest next week), and then there was the dog in underpants...

Um, yeah. Let's just go back to I forgot to blog and not into my workplace is weird. At least, let's not do it today.

So what does that leave me? Not too much, I suppose. I'll give it a think for a moment.



*insert elevator music here*





Ok, here's a question. What age is too young for boys (or girls. This'll fit for girls too) to be using hair products? I had a boy in my morning program with a fauxhawk, and it kind of got me to wondering if it was really appropriate. I mean, it definitely looked kind of cute on him and no doubt he was emulating an older brother or maybe even his father, but the kid was five years old. Does a five-year-old really need to be gelling up?

I don't know.

It was harmless, I have to admit. Compared to what goes on with those beauty pageant moms who put false eyelashes and hairpieces on their three-year-olds, it was so far down on my personal scale of what the hell are you doing to your kid? that I'm not sure why I'm even mentioning it. It was a fun little hairdo on a five-year-old, that's all.

I guess... I guess it was maybe a little bit of wishing that kids in general wouldn't start to get concerned about how they look so early in life? Yeah, that could be. I can't help but think that children nowadays don't have enough time to be children, and thinking of a kindergarten kid already starting to worry about whether he looks ok (which, again, I don't think this particular kid was. It's just the example I have at hand) is a bit depressing to me.

Um, says the girl who had her ears pierced -- at her own request -- for the first time in Grade One...



Oh, and ladies? If you're considering getting your daughter's ears pierced before she's old enough to tell you that she wants pierced ears, just don't. Seeing pierced ears on a baby bothers me so very much. Even more than those ugly flowered hairbands that some people insist upon foisting on their kids. At least the hairbands can come off at nap time. Earrings? Not so much.

Ok. That ended up to be a post after all. Back to work for me, then. That and sneezing. Expect me to be sounding like I'm the only one who's ever had a cold in the next few days. I'm awfully good at that side of being sick.

As my two fans are very well aware.

Ahhh. Cute puppy love...

Today's photo, you may notice, is not of cute puppy love. It's of wet mock orange blossoms. I suppose they fit the cute part in a way, but mostly they're just pointless.

As usual.

Now, cute puppy love. And I apologise if this sounds crosser than I really am. It's just that I've been out in the heat maaaybe a bit too much today, and the headache I started my day with is getting worse by the minute.

Sorry, where was I? Oh yeah, cute puppy love.

I was looking at some of the Illustration Friday entries on my lunch break today (which... mine is incredibly lame this time around, so no need to bother looking for it) and I found myself getting more than usually annoyed by them for a few reasons. The first was an ongoing thing there which I don't think can be helped, but it gets old after a while: people randomly choosing stuff they've done ages ago and stretching the limits of the prompt word's definition to try to make a phony fit. Like I said, ongoing thing that can probably never be fixed in the non-juried format they use, so let's move on. The second thing? Cute. Man, do I get tired of cute. I do know that it says more about me than about the artists, and that cute has plenty of fans (and probably makes people plenty of money), but seriously? That place can be cute overload. It gets so that I have to avoid whole categories -- and probably end up missing some things that I'd really like -- because I just can't take the thought of more cute.

Third? Well, this is where the puppies come in, and where I'm going to have to tread a little lightly. Anthropomorphism. The word this week was gesture, and already I'm noticing an awful lot of depictions of dogs and cats (and probably other animals that I'm forgetting) making gestures of "love".

But can they?

I trained as a zoologist, and we were always warned to be very careful about assigning human emotions to animals. However, I also grew up with a lot of pets, and it's not hard for me to think of a dog or a cat loving its owner (incidentally, it probably says quite a bit that I was about to put quotes around the word loving just then). I had somewhat of a think about why the whole thing in art annoyed me today, and here's what my opinion seems to be at the moment. And yes, you'll be able to read a fair amount of my schooling into this:

I honestly think we should question ourselves when we're ascribing human feelings to animals. It's easy to see them, yes; we're wired to see ourselves in everything (don't believe me? Just try to look at a North American style electrical plug-in without seeing a face there). However, until science progresses radically there is NO WAY that we can really know if animal behaviours can be translated to human emotions. That's the bare fact. We don't know. Do I think that a dog love its owner? Yeees... but at the same time I know that most if not all of a dog's actions can be extrapolated back to pack behaviour in wolves. If your dog saves you from a fire is it because he loves you, or because he's trying to protect his pack as a matter of his own survival?

I can't answer that, and I suppose that's why I get uncomfortable around people who act as if their pets are their babies. It's not a baby; it's a pet. It's a different species. It may, in fact, have emotions (and I do believe that animals have emotions. Don't get me wrong there), but its emotions may have very little to do with yours.

When our last dog was a puppy, if she was stretched out on the floor and you sat down anywhere near her, she'd practically amoeba her way across the carpet until at least part of her was touching you. That could be looked at as "ahhh. Puppy loves you!!!" or "the puppy must miss her littermates", I guess. I think you can figure out which side of that debate I fall on by now.

So, yeah. I guess in the end it was a combination of too much cute and too many loving puppies that got to me with this week's word, and I'd really like to thank all of the artists who posted gestural figure drawings instead for saving me from the treacle morass for another week.

Just noticed that somewhere along the line I managed to drop cats from the puppy love rant. And why? Well, as much as I like dogs, I'm admittedly a cat person. I like the cats; the cats like &/or tolerate me. And we both like our mutual space, I think. It doesn't really get into wondering if the cats looove me, and I'm good with that. I guess that's why there are so few cats making grand gestures then, eh?

Leaf me

So, I was out taking pictures in the rain this morning because I was running a little short of pointless photos since I hadn't had a chance to get out with the camera for a while (plus, the mosquitoes. Gah, the mosquitoes).

Pictures in the rain. The things I do for you people.

Anyway, this means that the next week or so's shots will feature wet everything. Oh, except for wet grape leaves. Two reasons on that: the grape vine is sheltered because it's right next to the house, and it's dull enough outside that, with the exception of the one you're seeing right now, the grape pictures didn't turn out as well as I might have liked. I might go out and give it another try in a moment, though. This blog needs more grape leaves.

No, I'm serious. I love grape leaves. Not so much to eat (I've never had a dolmade, so I'm not even sure what it's like to eat grape leaves), but for their structure. Their shape, their veining... and for the way they curl up in the fall. You see, it's all about fairly tough veins in a relatively thin and delicate leaf surface. When they dry up they make the most fascinating shapes. Fantastic to draw.

It's probably no surprise to any of my two fans who have followed my olf adventures, but I tend to find leaves fascinating in general. I love the branching patterns the veins make. I love the way that they seem superficially symmetrical, but upon closer examination have all kinds of little variations scattered throughout their growth (a reminder that, however preprogrammed organisms might be to grow a certain way, outside conditions are always going to cause changes. If you want uniqueness, you should be looking at leaves rather than snowflakes. There's a much greater chance that you'll find two snowflakes that are the same than you could ever manage for two leaves. Or, erm, at least I'm assuming...). On a day like today, I love the way their waxy surfaces cause the raindrops to ball up and magnify certain parts of the leaf. I love their greenness, and how that greenness reflects their function.

Why yes, I'm a Grade A nerd. No surprise there.

I suppose there's nothing wrong with getting enthusiastic about something so important to our existence as leaves (let's face it -- we wouldn't be here without green plants), but I'll admit that it does lead to an overabundance of photos that are probably pretty boring for those of you out there in Blogland.

I...

Don't care, really. My house, my rules, and leaves make me happy.

Good thing, really, because I got the planters on my balcony done so late this year that I'll be lucky if I have anything other than leaves.

Anyway. I think I'll take the camera out now and have another go at the grape leaves, if you don't mind. If nothing else, it'll give me something to draw in the winter when I'm stuck inside and moping about the lack of leaves...

Take your kid outside

The pointless photo? Well, sometimes I just feel like mucking about with my more mediocre shots, that's all. Call this one Iris Assaulted By Photoeditor.

Still, the shapes are kind of neat. Aren't they?

----------

Ok, topic. The post title is referring to a phrase that's kind of become a buzzword in interpretation lately, to the point where I kind of find it annoying. For anyone outside of my insular naturalist world, the whole thing more or less came about with Richard Louv and what he called "nature-deficit disorder". The gist of it (for my purposes, at any rate) is that children who are disconnected from nature and the outdoors are less healthy -- both physically and mentally -- in their day-to-day lives. Children who have unstructured play outside on a regular basis tend to be better adjusted in life as a whole.

Ok, yeah. Sounds reasonable. But when you're hearing it over and over again as kind of a rallying cry, it can get to be a whatever topic in a hurry.

That is, until you see it in action.

I usually work with elementary school children (that'd be about ages 4 - 12, for those who aren't familiar with the North American school system). This past week, however, I had a few groups of teenagers. I don't always look forward to teenagers, partly because they're hitting the stage where it's natural for them to test their boundaries with adults, and partly because most of them are taller than me. It's funny, but the height thing doesn't generally bother me with adults. With kids, though, it's undeniable that height subliminally conveys a certain amount of authority.

Um, anyway.

Teenagers towards the end of the school year when everyone's ready to just stop listening and get the hell out of Dodge? Sounds like trouble. But... I really got a different dynamic this week. Instead of yeah, right, Nature Girl, I found myself with good listeners who asked fantastic questions. Even the group I was expecting to be extremely difficult got into things a fair bit once we were out on the trail.

So what happened? Am I just that good at holding an audience? Well, my ego and I would like to say yes, but I think a big part of it was that the kids were really happy to be outside. They've been indoors all term, they're finishing their exams, and this gave them a chance to go out, enjoy the day (I was lucky to have some pretty decent days for the programs), and learn something about nature. Yes, I was still teaching, but not in the structured you-have-to-learn-this way we expect kids to deal with. And did they get something out of it?

I genuinely think that they did. They seemed to be enjoying themselves, anyway.

Interesting to see the outdoor theory in practice, in any case.




So, the moral? Well, not to get high-horsey or anything, but how about if I just give you a little nudge to encourage your children to drop the computers and video games for a while now and then and find out what's going on outside? Give them some unscheduled time. Not everything has to be filled up with lessons, teams, and homework. Something as simple as that could help create a happier person in the long run, and it sure as heck isn't going to hurt them any.





She says, while typing on a computer in the basement.

Maybe I should go practice what I preach...

Form

Yeah, I know that the doodles usually land on the other blog (see Other Blog on the sidebar if you're curious. I'm too lazy to link today). There's a roundabout reason why this one is here instead, however, and I may even eventually get to it. First, though:

It's Jimsonweed, which gets the more highfalutin' name of Angel Trumpet when it's planted in a garden. The flowers are pretty. The plant? Poisonous and strongly (and dangerously) hallucinogenic. Only the extremely stupid would attempt it. I hope, at least.

The drawing took me about fifteen minutes. I was aiming for just line without shading, and I was also trying for speed. Not too bad, all things considered, but I still need to work on being a bit freer with the pen.

Hmm. The word freer looks just plain wrong typed out, you know?

The reason I chose that particular plant as today's subject was the shape. The form. A good, strong form that leads to some easy inferences about the plant's possible pollinators.

Ok, ok, only if you happen to be a nerd biologist, I suppose.

As a nerd biologist (and in general, really), I tend to get caught up in forms. You see, the neat thing about the forms of living things that haven't been completely mucked about with by being overbred by humans to look different is that shapes can tell you a lot about what those living things do. In the case of plants, how they pollinate or keep from being overgrazed. In the case of animals, how they live their lives. What they eat, what they're hunted by, what they have to do to make more animals... it's all there in the forms. If you know something about forms and how they work, you can make some pretty good educated guesses about any living thing's function in the ecosystem. Or the world, come to it. Yes, boys and girls, a bit of knowledge of comparative anatomy can be an important step in trying to understand how the world works.

Which leads me to dissection.





Yes, seriously.

I have a zoology degree, which can be partially translated as: I've cut up a fair number of dead things in my time. Now, some of you will be completely grossed out by that. Ok, I get how people could feel that way. Some of you, though, will be completely offended instead. Some of you may be offended to the point where you'd feel like dousing me with red paint, calling me a murderer, and asking me how I can reconcile the deaths of those animals with the study of life that my mammalian ecology background supposedly promotes.

I don't have a lot of respect for that kind of knee-jerk reaction, to be honest. And I could sit here and patiently explain why, but if you're the type who has that reaction it's not going to make a bit of difference anyway, so I don't think I'll bother wasting my time or yours. I will say this, however:

• If you want to try to save something, you have to try to understand it. Otherwise you're just going off half-cocked and you may do more harm than good.
• Sometimes to understand things, you have to dig deeper than you might expect. And sometimes you have to study aspects that, on the surface, may seem to have little relation to the main topic. That type of study can get messy, but without it you can't move any further. Example? Well, how do you suppose that scientists figured out our pets' nutritional needs so that we could go to the store and buy properly balanced foods for them? Years ago a pet cat wasn't expected to live more than ten years (if that). Scientists discovered that cats couldn't produce an essential nutrient that most mammals make for themselves. Cats depend on their prey for it instead. Add the nutrient to the food; cats are suddenly living longer, healthier lives. But you can bet that the discovery itself didn't come from simply offering cats a bunch of different foods and seeing which ones they liked better. Oh, and google taurine if you think that I'm making this up.
• To understand forms, how they work, and their importance, there is never going to be a true substitute for hands-on discovery of the real thing. I can tell you first-hand that even the best scientific illustrations can never show you the real life view. The worst ones can be dangerously misleading. Would you really want a surgeon who'd only ever looked at pictures and simulations and had never touched a cadaver?

Now, having said that (and this is all just to get something out of my system. I got really annoyed by a particular television a--hole the other day. More annoyed than I should have, I know, but ignorance shouted loudly is one of my huge pet peeves in life), do I think that every high school student should be up to his or her elbows in formalin and pickled guts? Hell, no. I did dissections in high school biology like a lot of you did, and it was a massive waste of time. Oh yeah, it was interesting for me, but I could have got the same thing from watching a decent video or (nowadays) using a good computer simulation. I don't believe that anyone who isn't going on to further studies in biology has any reason to need to cut up a fetal pig, or even an earthworm for that matter. From my memories of Biology 10, dissection days were mostly just an excuse for teenage girls to act attractively squeamish for the boys, and for teenage boys to tease each other with assorted parts of dead animals. Even for those of us who were interested in the actual subject, the specimens and resources usually weren't good enough to get much out of, and the shrieking and giggling from the less-interested students was frustrating.

I'd almost go along with the paint-throwers when it comes to needless dissection in schools. Almost. I have no use for PETA and their overly-hysterical imitators for many other reasons that I won't go into now (a girl's gotta have lunch at some point, after all),  so I can't in the end condone screaming hissy fits from those types for anything.

And with that...

um...

This actually took a more preachy turn than I intended, especially since it started with a harmless drawing of a flower. Sorry about that. Still... aren't you glad I chose not to do a drawing of a half-dissected frog instead? I'll admit, I did consider it. And it's not like it would have been the first time I'd drawn a dissection, after all.

My life has been a bit odd? I'd give you that one, I guess.